surge update - Iraq Bomb Kills 48 in Volatile North

[spanone]

AGHDAD — A suicide bomber attacked a restaurant on Thursday where Sunni Arabs and Kurds were meeting to ease friction in the tense northern city of Kirkuk. At least 48 people were killed in the bombing, apparently aimed at provoking extremists along widening ethnic fault lines just as American plans to withdraw militarily from Iraq became official.

Nearly 100 were wounded in the bombing, which was the deadliest in Iraq in six months. It occurred north of Kirkuk in a huge restaurant packed with as many as 3,000 people to celebrate the end of the religious holiday Id al-Adha. Several women and children were reported among the dead.

“All of a sudden we heard a very loud explosion,” said Shirzad Mowfak Zangana, a supervisor at the restaurant. “Two of the walls collapsed, and then the next thing I remember is that I felt blood covering my face. People were screaming. Children were crying. Smoke filled all three dining rooms.”

The apparent target was symbolic and incendiary: a meeting of Kurdish officials and Sunni Arab members of the Awakening, mostly former insurgents now working for the government, trying to reduce tension between Arabs and Kurds, each with claims on the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

Even before the bombing, the fear of violence in Kirkuk was so high that the city was exempted from nationwide provincial elections, scheduled for Jan. 31.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/world/middleeast/12iraq.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

[Lint Head]

1. MSNBC says 55 were killed

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28173545/

:dem:

[spanone]

2. hope they're wrong